The question most definitely will arise in you. It happens to all of us eventually. Maybe during a short commute to the corner grocer. Really it could happen anywhere. The removal of another wooded corner lot, or even a vast stretch of forest, though preferably not ancient or virgin forest. But it really doesn’t matter what triggers it, but it always, eventually, gets triggered. You ask yourself, and I know you have… you ask yourself… “Is this happening everywhere?” You ponder the consequences. Is it happening everywhere? What if it is, what if it is. You ask yourself this a couple times, and again question the significance of your question. There is an answer. You know there is. If the answer is no, no worries! But, if the answer is not no, if this is happening everywhere, what are the repercussions? What could it mean? You are intelligent. You easily imagine these nightmare scenarios of a world stripped of nature. Very frightening. It bothers you for a second, then, when the light turns green, it is gone, you continue on with your morning, convincing yourself that everything is as it should be.
Everything is not as it should be; everything is NOT as it should be.
POPE QUOTE: "We all see that today man can destroy the foundation of his existence, his Earth... Our Earth is talking to us and we must listen to it and decipher its message if we want to survive,"
If we want to survive? Is this really an issue of the survival of the human race? And if so, he says, you must listen to what our Earth is saying. Well, you heard her, you heard her loud and clear. She spoke to you earlier, during that uneventful drive to this event this evening. She pulled herself together, centered herself on you, got your undivided attention, and SCREAMED! Like the innocent victim in a mall parking lot who is being beaten and robbed, she screamed in the only voice she knows, she spoke in “spirit language” directly to where it matters most. Right here (heart). Right here. Now, are you going to just walk away, or is enough enough? If the pope says we must listen to mother earth if we are to survive, does he mean this literally, that she can really talk to us, or is he asking you to listen to your heart during these moments of reflection. Ah, to find the screaming truth in a moment of silence. That’s what he is saying. The truth is there. It is there in these tiny moments. They are all there, all the answers, all the solutions, all the fixes, all the motivation, all the righteousness, all the hope, all the sacrifice, all the compassion, all the love. It is all there. Not only is it all there, but, believe it or not, they, those little nuggets of wisdom and love, are seeking out your questions, your worries, your fears, and trying dearly to find you, to show you the light and the way. For what you are witnessing, this insignificant destruction of an inconsequential piece of land is not an isolated incident. It is global, it is planet-wide. It is happening to a greater or lesser degree TO THE ENTIRE LIVING WORLD. IT IS EVERYWHERE. You are not witnessing just the removal of a few trees or a few acres, what you are seeing is a global genocide. Unknowingly, we are witness to the final death throes of a struggling, ignored, and traumatically beaten geological epic; as the Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences so eloquently puts it, “We are into the opening stages of a human-caused biotic holocaust--a wholesale elimination of species--that could leave the planet impoverished for at least five million years.” E.O. Wilson is a little more spiritual. In his book The Future Of Life he writes “An Armageddon is approaching at the beginning of the third millennium. But it is not the cosmic war and fiery collapse of mankind foretold in sacred scripture. It is the wreckage of the planet by an exuberantly plentiful and ingenious humanity."
Time is not running out, it already has. We should have seen this coming decades ago and done something then. But we didn’t, and we find ourselves where we are today, balanced precariously on the edge of global environmental collapse. It has progressed too far for us to not feel some significant repercussions of our destructive actions in the coming years. We may be able to avoid total collapse of Earth’s living systems and the collapse of society as we know it, but our window of opportunity is closing fast. We not only need to contemplate drastic change immediately, but implement this change of course within a decade. Beyond that and we run into the risk of natural feedback loops, from losing keystone species and/or ecosystems resulting in the loss of all other species/ecosystems that depend on that keystone causing inevitable environmental collapse, to global warming greenhouse feedbacks causing unacceptable rises in global temperatures. We do not actually know if an inevitable chain reaction collapse is decades away, years away, or even a few years behind us, but we must act now.
Everything is not as it should be; everything is NOT as it should be.
POPE QUOTE: "We all see that today man can destroy the foundation of his existence, his Earth... Our Earth is talking to us and we must listen to it and decipher its message if we want to survive,"
If we want to survive? Is this really an issue of the survival of the human race? And if so, he says, you must listen to what our Earth is saying. Well, you heard her, you heard her loud and clear. She spoke to you earlier, during that uneventful drive to this event this evening. She pulled herself together, centered herself on you, got your undivided attention, and SCREAMED! Like the innocent victim in a mall parking lot who is being beaten and robbed, she screamed in the only voice she knows, she spoke in “spirit language” directly to where it matters most. Right here (heart). Right here. Now, are you going to just walk away, or is enough enough? If the pope says we must listen to mother earth if we are to survive, does he mean this literally, that she can really talk to us, or is he asking you to listen to your heart during these moments of reflection. Ah, to find the screaming truth in a moment of silence. That’s what he is saying. The truth is there. It is there in these tiny moments. They are all there, all the answers, all the solutions, all the fixes, all the motivation, all the righteousness, all the hope, all the sacrifice, all the compassion, all the love. It is all there. Not only is it all there, but, believe it or not, they, those little nuggets of wisdom and love, are seeking out your questions, your worries, your fears, and trying dearly to find you, to show you the light and the way. For what you are witnessing, this insignificant destruction of an inconsequential piece of land is not an isolated incident. It is global, it is planet-wide. It is happening to a greater or lesser degree TO THE ENTIRE LIVING WORLD. IT IS EVERYWHERE. You are not witnessing just the removal of a few trees or a few acres, what you are seeing is a global genocide. Unknowingly, we are witness to the final death throes of a struggling, ignored, and traumatically beaten geological epic; as the Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences so eloquently puts it, “We are into the opening stages of a human-caused biotic holocaust--a wholesale elimination of species--that could leave the planet impoverished for at least five million years.” E.O. Wilson is a little more spiritual. In his book The Future Of Life he writes “An Armageddon is approaching at the beginning of the third millennium. But it is not the cosmic war and fiery collapse of mankind foretold in sacred scripture. It is the wreckage of the planet by an exuberantly plentiful and ingenious humanity."
Time is not running out, it already has. We should have seen this coming decades ago and done something then. But we didn’t, and we find ourselves where we are today, balanced precariously on the edge of global environmental collapse. It has progressed too far for us to not feel some significant repercussions of our destructive actions in the coming years. We may be able to avoid total collapse of Earth’s living systems and the collapse of society as we know it, but our window of opportunity is closing fast. We not only need to contemplate drastic change immediately, but implement this change of course within a decade. Beyond that and we run into the risk of natural feedback loops, from losing keystone species and/or ecosystems resulting in the loss of all other species/ecosystems that depend on that keystone causing inevitable environmental collapse, to global warming greenhouse feedbacks causing unacceptable rises in global temperatures. We do not actually know if an inevitable chain reaction collapse is decades away, years away, or even a few years behind us, but we must act now.
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